Forest and Stream 
$3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 1912. 
VOL. LXX1X.—No. 6. 
127 Franklin St., New York. 
Through Unexplored Guerrero 
By PROF. WILLIAM NIVEN 
Chapter I.—Into the Wilderness 
[The Mexico of to-day, a land covering an area of more than 800,000 square miles, is fairly well known to civilized man as far south as Mexico City, the capital of 
the republic, built on the ruins of the ancient Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire. But if one draws a line from east to west, from the Gulf of Mexico to the 
Pacific Ocean, through this capital, he will find lying to the south clear to the Guatemala line, a stretch of wilderness less known than the pine barrens of Canada and 
more thinly inhabited than the eastern slope of the Andes. 
Here rises mountain range on mountain range; here flow numberless small rivers into greater streams, abundantly watering great uncultivated gorges, and eventually 
emptying crystal tides into two oceans; here lie mile on mile of buried cities, centers of population which were crumbling ruins when thunder and lightning played 
’round Calvary; here dwell great snakes ready to crush the wanderer in their powerful coils, and here roams the largest of the cats of the New World, the spotted 
jaguar, undisputed king of the mountain and the valley, the forest and the level rive?- bank. Even to scienfists the scattered wild tribes which make their homes 
in this southern half of Mexico are unknown, creatures almost as wild as the animals which dwell in their forests, and yet no kin to the city-builders who lived and 
worked and died in this region long before the Aztecs came to the Vale of Anahuac. 
Wildest of all this large area, which comprises at least half of all Mexico, is the State of Guerrero, lying mare than one hundred miles south and west of Mexico 
City. It is a State of mountains, dry, save where large streams flow through precipitous canons yet filled with gold, and with ruined cities now buried beneath many 
feet of earth and vegetation. Thence came the greater part of the gold which Cortez sent to Spain and Mexico; thence, likewise, came the treasure of the Montezumas, 
yet the State has been scarcely scratched in a mining way.— Editor.] 
M Y first glimpse of the prehistoric riches 
of the Mexican State of Guerrero was 
obtained in 1889, when I visited Chil- 
pancingo, the capital of the State, on a mis¬ 
sion not connected with archeological or eth¬ 
nological work. While in Chilpancingo, I had 
the pleasure to be the guest of the Governor, 
Gen. F. O. Arce, an able executive and a deep 
student of the country and the people he ruled. 
The Governor had a large collection oi 
antiques, and among them I noticed a num¬ 
ber of idols, ornaments, and one or two clay 
pots, of a design altogether different from any¬ 
thing I ever before had seen. These, Gen. 
Arce informed me, came from the ruins of an 
extensive city a few miles from the village of 
Xochipala. He added the still more interest¬ 
ing news that, to his own knowledge, no 
foreigner had ever seen these ruins, much less 
tried to wrest from them their secrets of the 
dim past. 
With the aid of Governor Arce, I selected 
four trustworthy natives, armed and provided 
them with horses and blankets, and, one 
bright morning in December, set out for the 
River of Mystery—the Rio Balsas, along whose 
shores the tribes of other days planted their 
massive stone cities. 
The Balsas River, numbered among the few 
great streams of Mexico, rises in the State of 
Tlaxcala, and flows southward and westward 
into the Pacific Ocean near the village of 
Zacatula. Terrific rapids make it almost un- 
navigable, while high mountain walls shut out 
its narrow valley from the world. As a conse¬ 
quence, both the modern and the ancient tribes 
along its shore are practically unknown, and it 
was with some misgivings that I set out, sur¬ 
rounded by my little bodyguard and provided 
with letters from Governor Arce to the vari¬ 
ous chiefs, on my journey into the burial 
ground of a great race. 
Out from Chilpancingo the trail, narrow, 
twisted, and, in many places, cut from the solid 
rock of the hills, rises first to the divide. 
About an hour’s ride from Chilpancingo we 
came to the village of Zumpango del Rio. The 
name of this town is a peculiar combination of 
the Nahuatl Indian word Zumpango, meaning 
“ancient skulls,” and the two Spanish words, 
del Rio, meaning “of the river,” or “beside the 
river,” probably so qualified to distinguish it 
from some other Zumpango of olden days. 
A description of Zumpango del Rio is a 
description of each and every other Indian 
village of this section. About two hundred 
houses, built of huge adobe bricks, with 
thatched or tiled roofs, clustered about a plaza 
MAP OF STATE OF GUERRERO, MEXICO. BLACK SPACE SHOWS AREA OF RUINS DISCOVERED BY PROF. 
NIVEN. EACH SMALL WHITE MARK IS A SEPARATE RUIN. 
